Brave: Averting an ad-blocking epidemic?

By the end of 2017 nearly 15 million internet users will use ad-blockers

The internet’s getting fired up over new web browser Brave which claims to block harmful ads and replace them with ‘clean ads‘ that meet its standards of not slowing down page load times or tracking users. The Guardian has called it the “iTunes of journalism”, yet critics say it is “blatantly illegal.”

The argument for ads hinges on keeping our online content free. Free Facebook, free news articles, free videos – are all made possible in the current model by selling space to advertisers who show you ads.

A brave new world?

Yet proponents of the Brave software see ads as intrusive and violating privacy by tracking people and collecting their data. Brave removes things like banner ads, which are delivered to millions of websites through automated ad networks, and which can be full of malware bots and trackers that follow users around the Web.

A senior analyst at eMarketer commented: “The good news is that numbers like this have forced those within the industry to think long and hard about what it is that they need to do better in order that this practice doesn’t become an epidemic”.

Finding a compromise to give some form of controlled ads, that will benefit the user as well as the publisher, could eventually make the internet safer and fairer for everyone.

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